Sunday, May 12, 2019

BlueSkiesResearch.org.uk: Stockholm

Just had a couple of weeks in Stockholm, courtesy of Thorsten Mauritsen at MISU. who we had previously visited in Hamburg. Lots of science will be forthcoming but we are too busy doing it to write about it for now

For the moment, I will just note that Thorsten is Danish, previously working in Germany but now in Sweden, we had discussions with his British and French group members, the Head of Department is Spanish. Discussions in the canteen seemed to be mostly English in a variety of accents (including the Dutch student who had considered coming to the UK but who had been dissuaded by the obvious reason), mixed with a range of unidentifiable Scandinavian languages – presumably mostly, if not all, Swedish. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn would be horrified to hear of such an outrageous situation and I’m relieved that they are doing their level best to ensure that no Brits will risk encountering such a terrible situation again.

(Actually, to be honest I am relieved that their level best is so pitiful that we aren’t actually going to leave the EU. But I’m still disgusted that they are so scared at the thought of people living, working and studying in different countries that they are completely fixated on the idea of preventing us from doing so.)

Haga parkrun was close to our hotel, and by strange quirk of fate on Sunday morning I ran a route which quite closely approximates a lap of the upcoming Stockholm marathon. I hadn't even known there was a marathon. Some were out practising for the famous Stockholm ski marathon too.

Stockholm has a lot of islands, and as a result, there’s a lot of coastline and water.

On our last night we had dinner in a Michelin-starred restaurant which was an interesting experience. However this photo below is just the little castle on the top of Kastellholmen which may be used as some sort of conference centre I think.